State and Rebel Movement Competition to Influence Recruitment

• In Event: Actors and Strategies of Violence in the Middle East

Abstract

Although the effect of state oppression on individuals' choice of activism and militancy is widely studied, we know very little about how state and rebel movements interact to influence this decision. I argue that in periods of high state oppression, rebel movements use high levels of emotional propaganda to incentivize individuals who are discouraged by oppression to become formal members of the movement. I find support for this hypothesis using a novel dataset of Turkish state oppression by manually coding the number of political arrests, political imprisonments, death penalties, etc. that have taken place between 1990 and 2020, and the official Kurdish rebel movement journals published between 1982 and 2020. In order to test the effect of state oppression and rebel propaganda on the individual preferences of activism and militancy, I conduct a survey experiment in Southeast Turkey where there has been significant involvement with the rebel movement PKK. I find that state oppression can lead some individuals to become a militant while discouraging others. Emotional rebel propaganda, on the other hand, motivates all individuals to become militant.

Author

• Ipek Ece Sener, Harvard University